Heart of the Crocodile
by darcyfarrow
Summary: Spoiler alert: this is based on the promo for 2.15; Emma's POV. The fingers of my right hand brush against something pliable and warm and dry. I close my eyes and I can see it through the magic: a red, beating orb. My magic draws it in and my hand closes around it. "What is that?" Henry gasps. "It's his heart," Neal answers, awestruck.


"_You know, where I come from, there are hearts that can withstand anything because of magic."_

_-Rumplestiltskin, "In the Name of the Brother"_

"We're in a magic-free, immortality-free zone now, Dark One! Congratulations, you've just been nominated Dead Man of the Year!"

I'd know that voice anywhere. I wheel and automatically reach for my gun—until I remember I had to leave it in Storybrooke so we could get through airport security. I don't even have my handcuffs. Well, at least I have my badge and a cell phone, and that should get us some quick help from my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, and I yank my phone out of my jacket.

And then Henry screams, "Grandpa! Emma, help!"

The son of a bitch has driven his hook into Gold's chest. Blood's squirting everywhere, and a weird sound is coming from Gold's throat along with the blood he's vomiting, and Hook just stands there laughing. "It took three hundred years, but I finally got justice for Milah!" As Gold goes gray-faced and bug-eyed and drops to the floor, Neal drops the pizza box and grabs Hook's arm, tries to spin him around, but the damned pirate is _caught_, his hook is stuck in Gold's chest and he's being dragged down to the linoleum. Neal's on top of him, still trying to pull Hook away, and I'm dialing 911, and over the commotion and that rattling in his throat Gold somehow fixes on me and yells, "No ambulance! Tour buses!" And he passes out, his head hitting the iron gate that's supposed to lock the bad guys out of this apartment complex.

Neal manages to get in a couple of good swings before the pirate detaches his hook and runs, leaving his fake appendage behind, buried in his enemy's chest. I bounce on my toes, torn between chasing the assailant or helping the victim, when a screeching of brakes, an incessant honking and a heavy thud from the street make my mind up for me. I glance out the entrance and see traffic has stopped and people are flocking around a body crumpled on the concrete.

Well, he enjoyed his vengeance for all of thirty seconds. I suppose, whatever hell he's in, he's satisfied.

"Papa," Neal is trying to use the sleeve of his hoodie to pat away the blood that's pouring out of his father's mouth. "Where's that damn ambulance?"

I try to explain to him what Gold meant about the tour buses—that if I call an ambulance, before the hour's out we'll all be the subject of an intense investigation, and before this day's out it'll be on every news wire in the world that magic is alive and well in Storybrooke, Maine. Gold's right; we're going to have to deal with this ourselves, even if we can't. . . . even if it means Gold dies.

"Let's get him upstairs," I say, picking up Gold's feet, and Neal takes by the shoulders.

"Henry," Neal tosses him the keys. "Run ahead and open the door."

We're young and strong and Gold's light, too light for a man whose powers once made him the biggest heavy in the world. With the blood smeared across his cheek and caking in his graying hair, he looks helpless. We get him up the stairs, passing a couple of yakking teens in the hall; it churns my stomach that they glance at Gold and laugh. I suppose I should be grateful for their inhumanity; otherwise they would've turned us in.

We get him onto the couch and Henry, pulling his head together, runs into the bathroom for towels, then runs into the kitchen and fills a mixing bowl with water. Neal tears his father's shirt open. "Let me, I've got training," I nudge him out of the way. Even if he knows first aid, Neal's in no condition for this kind of work. The truth is, I do have first aid training but I have no idea what to do for a hook wound, especially one that seems to have pierced a lung. Neal washes the blood from his father's face as Henry runs back and forth, fetching anything he thinks will help: a bottle of peroxide, a box of Band-Aids.

Gold's going to die, and we're going to have to let him.

"Papa," Neal says again, but he can't revive him. "Papa, please."

Henry's standing at the head of the couch, out of our way but close enough he can touch Gold's shoulder, and he does. "Grandpa, don't die," he whispers.

I'm applying pressure to the wound, but I don't know if it's the right thing to do. If there was someone who could tell me what to do, someone who wouldn't turn us in. I'm a law enforcement official; I'm supposed to keep my cool, supposed to know what to do. "Henry! Get my phone out of my jacket. Left pocket. Scroll down through the contacts until you find Dr. Whale."

"I'm on it." I'm proud of this guy that he's keeping it together. Only eleven and he's already witness to a brutal attack. As I study Gold's ashen face, I figure it won't be much longer before I'll have to bump up the charge to homicide.

"Not yet, Papa, not yet," Neal is whispering in Gold's ear. "We didn't even have a chance to get over the anger."

Gold gasps and his head falls to the side and he vomits more blood, but his eyes wrench open. His pupils are dilated but they fix on Neal. His blue lips move; no words, just another rattling breath comes out. But it's clear from the way he shapes his lips what he's trying to say: _Forgive_ _me_.

"Forgive me too," Neal whispers and presses his lips to Gold's forehead.

Henry's dialed and is holding the phone against my ear. I get Whale's answering service; damn Frankenstein's out on a date with the werewolf! "Find him! Tell him to call me immediately if he knows what's good for him!" I bark out my phone number and Henry takes the phone away from my ear. He holds it open in both hands, waiting for it to ring, and walks back around to Gold's shoulder. "Grandpa, don't die." Poor kid's doing his best to be brave, but he's crying now, for a man he barely knows. There's something odd there—I've always felt it—some sort of connection between him and Gold, even though Henry's always said Gold is evil. Did they know, at some subconscious level, that they were blood relatives? Henry is jabbering nervously, "I need you, Grandpa. David is cool and all, but he doesn't know things like you do, and he's not you. I can't be who I'm supposed to be without you."

Gold tries to tell Henry something with his eyes, since his voice isn't working. Henry seems to get the message; the tension goes out of his narrow little shoulders and he smiles. "I love you, too, Grandpa."

"Whale, where the hell—" I mutter. And then my hands suddenly feel hot, like I've stuck them into a barbeque pit, and they're glowing, like hot charcoals. Before I can find a scientific explanation for it, I feel a tugging, a firm, persistent tugging at my fingers. . . and my hands sink into Gold's chest. I figure his lungs must have collapsed beneath the pressure I was applying to the wound. Crap, did I kill him? But his head slides on the cushions and he looks at me and he says in a low but clear voice, "Emma."

I jerk back and his blood spurts everywhere.

"You can do this, Emma," he tells me. "You have all the power you need."

"Magic," Henry exclaims, pointing at my bloody, glowing hands.

Neal gapes at me. "You? What the f-?"

"Yeah, me," I snap. I don't have time for his bull right now. My hands move without my say-so back to Gold's chest and I push a little on the skin, and my hands sink inside—yeah, inside his body. I look to Gold for instruction, but he's passed out again. I have no idea what the hell to do, but my hands seem to, or at least they're trying; vibrations come and go in rings and flow from my fingertips into his body, into his bloodstream, and I close my eyes and I'm _seeing_ things, pulsating things, living things, and my magic rushes through his blood and surrounds each of those things that I recognize now as his vital organs. My magic cradles each organ, like a mom cradling a newborn, and offers protection against the violent forces raging through his body, and my magic courses through his blood, seeking injury, soothing and healing and cocooning his kidneys, his liver, his spleen, his heart.

But his lungs. . . the violence suffuses his lungs, blowing them up from the inside, and my magic stands by helplessly, shoved back by the strength of this evil force. There's not a damn thing I can do, but I keep trying. I tuck my chin in to hold back tears.

"Take this."

I raise my eyes to Gold's, but his eyes are closed. I could've sworn. . . .

Something's tugging at my hands again. I find myself being drawn forward. The fingers of my right hand brush against something pliable and warm and dry. I close my eyes and I can see it through the magic: a red, beating orb.

My magic draws it in and my hand closes around it. I pull my hand back and with a sucking sound it leaves Gold's chest.

"What is that?" Henry gasps.

"It's his heart," Neal answers, awestruck. "You took out his heart."

"I didn't mean—it doesn't look like a heart," I blather.

"Not his heart heart," Neal tries to explain. "It's not the physical heart; it's more like the soul."

"He told me to," I defend myself.

Neal is staring at the thing throbbing in my glowing hand. "Only a very powerful mage can do that. I saw him do that once; it gave him complete control of the man he took it from. And when he was finished—when the man had done what my father wanted him to—he put the heart back in, and the man recovered."

"I'll put it back," I offer quickly, but I hear a sharp "No."

"Mr. Gold!" Henry exclaims. He leans over to peer into Gold's face, but the old man doesn't stir and Henry's perplexed. "Mom? Did you hear that? He talked."

_Mom_. He called me _mom_. I can't miss that, despite all the weirdness going on around us. "I heard."

"Heard what?" Neal's getting frustrated.

"Inside," Gold's voice instructs. "Put it inside your chest. Don't be afraid. It won't hurt either of us."

"Come on, Dad, you have to have heard that," Henry insists, but Neal shakes his head.

And then I realize there's something else going on here. The same thing that's different about me is different about my son. We're. . . .like them. Like Gold and Cora and Regina and Blue. But not like them, damn it; I'm going to make sure of that. Not like them with their power plays.

"Please, Emma," Gold's voice is growing faint. "Do it now. It's the only way I can live."

Why am I trusting him, this arsonist, this racketeer, this creep who nearly beat a man to death with his damn cane and might've done the same to me if Neal hadn't stopped him? This thug in Armani who threatened, just two days ago, to kill my entire family, including my son, if any harm came to his amnesiac girlfriend? Are we just a family of suckers, Snow and David and me? But I press the throbbing orb to my chest and as it vanishes, Gold releases a shuddering breath. Neal presses two fingers against the underside of Gold's jaw.

I can barely hear him, Neal's speaking so faintly, or is it the pounding I'm now hearing in my ears? "He's gone."

As Neal pulls away, Henry throws himself onto Gold, hugging him tightly. "NO!"

And my son starts to glow. His entire body glows green and I can feel waves of electricity radiating from him. His magic is different from mine, cool and placid, not hot and urgent. Peaceful, not angry. But he's too late.

I seek out Gold's pulse too and confirm Neal's pronouncement. Gold is dead.

I get up and walk into the bathroom to wash my hands, and to give the men—Henry and Neal—some privacy for their tears. I'm a cop. I'm supposed to pull myself together, figure out what needs to be done. We have a body to. . . dispose of. And we can't do the legal, above-board thing.

"Frankenstein."

I sputter over the glass of water I'm trying to drink. It's his voice—Gold's damn voice again, but loud and clear like he's right behind me. I look in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, but there's no one behind me.

"Take me to Frankenstein. Fast, while my body's still warm. Give him my body and my heart; he'll take it from there."

"What the fu—"

"Princess, please! Don't waste time cussing."

"I don't under—"

"Just listen. What you have inside you now isn't just my heart; it's my power, my memories, my knowledge, everything I am beyond that shell on Bae's couch. I can't keep talking to you. I have to use the strength I have to keep my heart beating."

"Wait!" I yell. "Tell me what to do!"

"You know everything I know. Just be quiet and listen. Frankenstein, Emma. Hurry!"

I run back into the living room, where Neal—I suppose I should call him Baelfire—is hugging Henry, or maybe it's the other way around. He's a liar and a thief, but Henry has a right to know him, and who knows, maybe they'll be good for each other, as Henry was for me. As I hope I am for Henry.

"It's okay; it's going to be okay," I assure them, and something inside tells me that's true. Something inside, literally. It's telling me step by step by step, in a calm, teacher-y voice, what to do. "Henry, take my hand. We're going to take him back to Storybrooke, and we're going to have to do this in a hurry, you get me? If we hurry, there's a chance he can be saved."

Neal stands over his father's body as if he's protecting it from a grave robber. "He's dead, Emma. Don't tell Henry—"

I put my hand up in his face. "He can be saved. He told me how. You can come with us or not; it's up to you. But we're leaving now." Henry takes my hand, and I pick up Gold's hand, which is still warm. I look to Baelfire for a decision. "We have to use magic to get there."

There are dried streaks on his cheeks as he glances at Henry, then at his father. It's one of the things I used to love about him, his big heart. Used to love. And he used to have the ability to admit it when he was wrong.

Baelfire takes Henry's other hand. "Take me too."

I guess he still has that ability.

My memory—or I guess it's Gold's—walks me through the fourteen steps for teleportation. It won't be easy; not only am I a newbie, but I'm also transporting three others under my power. But then I remind myself, it's not just my power any more.

I'm operating under the power and knowledge of the world's supreme sorcerer.

I just hope Frankenstein can bring this monster back to life.


End file.
